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The following blog posts are written by people with personal experience of depression. By talking openly, our bloggers hope to increase understanding around mental health, break stereotypes and take the taboo out of something that – like physical health – affects us all.

Zach, August 28, 2018

It’s a question I often ask myself. Should I be honest? Lay all my cards on the table? Do my closest friends and family need to know every little detail about my struggle? If I did tell them, would they even care? Or would they just give me the generic responses I’d heard my whole life? “Everyone feels like that”, “No one likes work, you just do it”, and the ever popular “Man up!” After all they probably have their own issues to deal with, right?

Some people with depression are made to feel like it is their fault for feeling the way they do and are told to simply ‘get out more’ and ‘snap out of it’. Similarly, those who have anxiety or OCD are told to ‘pull themselves together’ and to ‘stop worrying over little things’.

Katie, August 7, 2018

“Depression is an illness, not a weakness nor a trait”.

This is probably one of the most powerful phrases about mental illness that I have heard. For anyone that thinks depression is a temporary emotion, just like happiness or anger, think again. Depression is an illness and nothing to be ashamed of.

My name is Andy. I’m married to my wonderful wife, Sam, and I have a two-and-a-bit year-old toddler, Ben. And for the first year of Ben’s life, I suffered first post-natal depression, and then full-blown clinical depression.